Atlas went to the boards and took a look to the different missions available. All rank G missions were garbage, they were all about hunting normal rabbits as food, herb gathering and doing pest control (hunting a certain amount of slimes or horned rabbits). After he went to the rank F board, he saw that the missions there were a little more decent. He decided to take one, it was to kill 5 goblins and bring the proofs of death back to the guild. He went to the counter to register the mission into his card, and then got out of the guild.

He tried to go towards the gate of the city to show his identification to the guards and avoid any future trouble, but he did some wrong turns along the way and ended up in the red light district. Atlas got goosebumps when he saw several women winking at him and inviting him to accompany them inside the pleasure-house. That was actually the name of the building: “The pleasure house”, there was even a plate over the door which stated it. The women trying to hook up with him weren’t the reason why he was having goosebumps, the real reason for that was that he had used his analyze skills on them, and every one of them had at least one venereal disease, if not two or three.

Atlas quickly got away from the red light district, and finally found the way to the gates of the city. Unfortunately, he didn’t get away quickly enough and someone had already taken notice of him, or more precisely, of the color of his eyes. Atlas finally arrived to the gate and he showed the guild card to the guards. After making sure everything was in order, they let him go and wished him luck on his mission. Atlas returned to the forest he had previously been in and started looking for the goblins. He thought it was strange that goblins were supposed to roam the forest, yet he hadn’t seen any when he first entered it.

He searched for almost an hour before finding a single goblin, but Atlas was shocked to see its reaction, instead of attacking him on sight as they did with the rest of the humans, the goblin turned around and escaped from him. Atlas gave it chase, and after 20 minutes of running after it, he found a goblin village. The village was quite large, there were around 300 goblins, give or take, so there had to be at least a couple of hobgoblins running the place. Atlas heard a woman’s scream and when he turned his head towards the source, he saw a woman whose adventurer’s clothes were being ripped by a group of goblins.

They had tied her hands above her head and had their instruments ready to play. Seeing that, Atlas remembered his late friend Jasmine and his sight went red, he stopped thinking and when he came to his senses, the houses on the goblin village were on fire, he was covered in green blood and there were 5 women trembling in front of him, scared of him. Seeing that they only looked at him with fright, Atlas sighted and spoke to them:

Atlas: "Hey, I just saved you… you don’t have to be scared of me, you know?"

The girls: "…"

Atlas: "Ok, have it your way… I’ll collect the proof of dead of the goblins as well as their cores, meanwhile you should get dressed. Here, have this!"

Saying that, Atlas made several dresses appear out of his bag of holding (he had actually made them appear from his inventory, but to the girls it appeared like he had taken the dresses out of the bag), and gave them to the girls so that they could cover themselves. Then, he collected the right ears of the goblins as well as their cores, and looked at the women. They had dressed up, and despite still being barefooted, they had the important parts covered. After cleaning himself, he decided to teleport the group to the gates of the city, but he didn’t want anyone to learn that he was capable of using teleportation magic, so he took out a blue orb, told the girls to touch it, and then teleported the whole group to the gates of the city.

The guards were startled by the arrival of the group, and there were complaints from the people in the queue because the guards had stopped giving pass into the city to check on the group. After Atlas explained the situation to the guards, they allowed the group to cut in and enter the city, to the astonishment of the people waiting in the queue. They didn’t dare to complain anymore, because that was the kind of treatment reserved only for the high nobility and they didn’t want to get in trouble, little did they know that Atlas was just a “commoner” who had arrived to the city two or three hours before they did.

Atlas accompanied the women to the Adventurers Guild to report their situation and have the guild send them back to their families, like it was the usual procedure. As soon as he entered the guild building with the women, all gazes were upon them, so he requested a private meeting room and the presence of the branch’s guild master. The receptionist to whom he requested the private meeting room happened to be the same one that had registered his chosen mission on his guild card, hence she knew the contents of his mission, and just a look at the women told her the rest of the story. She immediately handed Atlas a key, and indicated him which room number it corresponded to, and while Atlas led the women to the meeting room, she went to notify the situation to the branch’s guild master.

After a while, a muscular one-eyed man with a large scar on the left side of his face entered the room accompanied by the receptionist. He presented himself as Leonard, and he asked for the details of Atlas’ mission and the rescue of the captive women. Atlas summarized the story and just said that he pursued a goblin and was led to the village, then, after seeing a woman on the verge of being raped, he started killing goblins and didn’t stop until he had killed all of them and rescued all the women. He didn’t give any details, and the women didn’t either, they were grateful for his help, but they were also terrified by his strength.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Leonard had a hard time believing the story, so he had someone sent to check the location and verify the story. Meanwhile, the proofs of death were handed over to the receptionist, and she had started calculating the reward. The total amount had been: 305 goblin ears, 7 hobgoblin ears and 1 goblin king ears, so the calculated reward was 305x2s + 7x9s + 1x13s = 686s = 6g 86s.

In Nirvatarus, 2 gold coins were enough to feed a family of 4, for 3 years, and Atlas had made 6 gold and 86 silver in just a couple of hours! Leonard and the receptionist were dumbstruck because they understood the implications of those numbers. That kind of income was what a B rank adventurer earnt in a month, yet he had done so in less than a day. They couldn’t even fathom his possibilities for the future…

Atlas was surprised too, he had asked around, and the cost of a cheap room in a decent inn was between 50 copper and 1 silver a night. Given that a year in Nirvatarus had exactly 360 days, he could easily rent a room in an inn for more than a year without having any money problems, when he understood this basic fact, he couldn’t believe how lucky he had been when he exterminated the goblin village. He was lost in his thoughts, but he heard someone clearing his throat and when he looked around Atlas saw Leonard trying to draw his attention to what he was saying.

Leonard considered that given Atlas’ strength, he should be promoted in rank. The strength he had shown made him eligible to be directly promoted to rank C, but the fact remained that not even a day had passed since Atlas had joined the Adventurers Guild, so he might have trouble if he became a rank C adventurer so soon. After listening to Leonard’s reasoning, Atlas accepted the promotion to rank D, after all, with his strength, he would be able to rank up very soon. Atlas received the money from the mission’s completion, plus a bonus: 7 gold. He was about to leave the guild when one of the girls he had saved called out to him, it was the adventurer girl:

???: "Myrddyn!"

Atlas: "Yes? How may I help you? Miss…"

???: "Lyndell. My name is Lyndell."

Atlas: "Ok, Lyndell, what do you want?"

Atlas was starting to get a little impatient. Ever since he had walked back into the city, he had felt that someone had been tailing him, and he wanted to deal with that person as soon as possible, so the girl calling out to him might give his tail the opportunity to escape.

Lyndell: "Well, I’m also an adventurer myself, but I got caught by the goblins and ended needing assistance, so thank you very much."

Atlas: "Ok, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave."

Lyndell: "No, wait! I- I’d like to h-have di-dinner with you, if you do-don’t mind… I-I’ll be c-cooking my-myself!"

When she finished her sentence, Lyndell was so embarrassed that she was using both hands to cover her blushing face. Atlas wondered for a second whether the girl might had some kind of hidden intention, such as making him lose sight of the guy tailing him, but seeing her innocent reaction to having asked him out for dinner, he discarded such thoughts and accepted her invitation.

Atlas: "Ok, I’ll have dinner with you tonight. Shall we go to your place now? It’s getting dark and it’d be troublesome if someone attacked us under the cover of the night. We really spent the whole afternoon in that meeting room…"

Lyndell: "Well, even if we got attacked, what do I have to fear? I have a rank D adventurer by my side to protect me!"

Atlas: "You don’t say…"

Atlas accompanied Lyndell to her house, on the way, he checked if he still was being tailed, and he was! The man who was tailing him hadn’t been too obvious during the day, but in the night he stood out quite a bit. Atlas thought about going to deal with him now that he had singled him out, but the beautiful girl by his side was pouting because he had gotten distracted, and he had stopped paying attention to what she was saying… so in the end, he chose to have dinner with her and deal with the guy following him later… he had the feeling that when he went out of Lyndell’s house he’d be still waiting for him.

He tried to help Lyndell make dinner, he didn’t feel right standing there doing nothing, but Lyndell chased him out of the kitchen and told him to read a book while she finished cooking. Atlas looked around the house, he realized there was something wrong with it… Lyndell couldn’t possibly afford to pay the rent for that kind of house, and she had no family… but then, Atlas connected the bits of information, and he understood that, the reason why she could live alone in that house, without having to pay an exorbitant rent, was that he had inherited it from her late parents…

Fortunately, Atlas hadn’t brought it up when he had been talking with her on the way to the house… otherwise, he’d have ruined the mood for the dinner and hurt her feelings. Atlas figured out that Lynell would be a precious mine of information, and after all, information gathering was exactly his reason for coming into the city of Letzne.